Alec Douglas-Home

Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home, was a member of every Conservative administration from 1935 to 1974. He was Prime Minister from October 1963 until narrowly losing to Harold Wilson the following year. He later served as Foreign Secretary, after which he returned to the House of Lords. Lord Home's career spanned: the government of Stanley Baldwin; Munich, Suez; the Cuban missile crisis; the Rhodesian rebellion; and the Tory leadership struggles over twenty years. Lord Home met Hitler and Mussolini at Munich; US presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon; and Krushchev, Gromyko and Chou En-Lai - there were few world leaders whose path he did not cross at some stage. His political career spanned sixty years and his marriage to Elizabeth fifty-four. He was, as described by Margaret Thatcher, a man who 'represented all that was best of his generation'.